Ten days in Estonia: Day four

I went out with something of a plan this morning and was very proud of myself for it.

I limited my morning coffee fest to just two or three cups and a cheese croissant — something which in normal circumstances should be something of an abomination — and planned my morning. I also learned, and had a brief chance to practise, võta heaks (you’re welcome) and homseni (see you tomorrow).

So in fact there were two plans — count them both — which happily coincided:

As it happened — and it was entirely random because I wasn’t entirely sure where I was going and had, once again, been distracted by magical colours — the Museum of Puppetry Arts is at the top of Lai, so two strings with one hand, as it were.

Some general wandering in vaguely the right direction took me to meet the Lucky Chimney Sweep on Suur-Karja, and as this was by accident it’s clear that he is very lucky indeed.

Back in the days when the people of Estonia had their chimneys swept and superstition was rife, people seeing a chimney sweep would do everything they could to touch a button on his uniform, as these were made from gold. You were considered very lucky if you could pilfer the button for yourself, although the chimney sweep would probably disagree. I didn’t get to touch any buttons but there were some people rubbing him politely.

This jovial chimney sweep is going about his business not far from the Sõprus cinema, an imposing Soviet-era building opened in the 1950s that was, at the time of its inception, Estonia’s first multiplex cinema due to its having three screens. It cost nearly a million rubles at the time and took around five years to build, its progress hindered by freezing conditions and a lack of manual labour. Only one of the two original halls survives as a theatre, the rest of the building now hosting a casino and a nightclub.

Sõprus means friendship in Estonian.

After a diversion up Saint Catherine’s Passage, I found my way back to Fat Margaret and then to Lai. Lai runs between just around the corner from Fat Margaret and the Long Leg, and at the top of it there is a small park with a fountain that is overlooked by the upper town, which is perched on a limestone cliff. In the little park is a deer statue, which tells of the bravery of a little deer escaping the Danish King.

I had the good fortune to arrive just as a very charistmatic tour-guide called George was telling his followers the story. In his telling of events, after a long day’s crusading, King Valdemar of Denmark was happily riding his horse around Toompea when he spied a tasty-looking deer that he thought would make for a fine feast. The deer, however, had other ideas and in a show of defiance after a coquettish game of hide and seek, decided to fling itself off the cliff to its doom rather than suffer the indignity of being consumed.

King Valdemar, so astonished by the beast’s bravery, decided to name the place where it expired Reh-fall, a portmanteau of the German words for deer (reh) and fall (fall) from where Tallinn’s historic name Reval was derived.

Sadly, there is no documentary evidence to support this story, but George told it with such imagination that it should be true.

According to Wikipedia it’s “more likely [that] Reval is derived from the name of the adjacent ancient Estonian county of Revalia (Rävala), and in fact the first recorded occurrences of that name predate the Danish king’s first visit to Estonia in 1219 by several years.”

I prefer George’s version.

Entrance to the Museum of Puppetry Arts costs 8€ and is a good way to kill an hour or so. There are various exhibitions of puppets from different backgrounds and time periods including shadow puppets — thought to be the first kind of puppet — all the way to insane steam-punk puppets that can be operated by scanning a QR code on your phone. There are mini-theatres in various places where you can play with puppets provided by the museum, if you didn’t have the foresight to bring your own.

Puppet himself was delighted to be among his kind, and it was a challenge to get him to leave. Some of the more sinister puppets, for example Mr Punch, have motion detectors and start moving as you approach. This was at fist slightly unnerving for the accompanying non-fabric who paid the entrance fee, but fun.

After more coffee, I did a little admin in the afternoon and with with Host and friends went to Taiboh for dinner. I was a little concerned that its pretention quotient was high when we got there, but the food was outstanding.

There were cocktails, and I discovered Vana Tallinn.